Jonathan Morin, Ubisoft Montreal's Lead Level Designer for Far Cry 2, likens playing games to the movie Groundhog Day. After awhile all players begin to feel like alienated versions of Bill Murray, realizing the world they're in is arbitrary and mostly unaffected by their presence. Morin gave a speech at GDC today entitled "Predictability in Games: How to Avoid Pre-Conceived Experiences in Design?" and focused on how developers can create games that provide players with genuinely meaningful experiences.

Morin began talking about Far Cry 2, which he has been working on for more than two and a half years. In creating the concept for the game, Morin looked at how games have typically tried to create meaningful experiences, basically managing player's emotions with scripted events. Morin compared this way of thinking about games to a trip to the museum in which there is a set path through the exhibition halls for the player and they can't deviate from it. They are directed to specific paintings and at each one they stop to consider a man appears and tells them everything there is to know about the painting then directs them to move on to the next one. "This doesn't make sense to me," said Morin. "What really matters is the player's ability to express himself." (Or herself, as it were).

Morin contrasted this "Narrative Control Obsession" in games to other media, noting that in books and film there is no one that tells you what to think or feel about what you are taking in. In those scenarios, the audience is free to think and feel for themselves, which ultimately creates a more engaging experience. Morin brought up the notion of predictability in games built around scripted events with an analogy to driving. The first time you drive up to an unknown intersection you tend to go much more slowly and look both ways, but as you become more and more familiar with the area, you will go into "auto-pilot" and speed through without even thinking about it.

The same phenomenon exists in game design, argued Morin, citing the original Super Mario Bros. as a prime example of a game built around predictability. Players progress in that game by simple memorization and repetition. The levels are always the same when players repeat them and once a player has figured out a part of a level they zoom through it, essentially on "auto-pilot." In contrast, Morin argued, Pac-Man represents the ideal model for creating dynamic patterns in a game that keep a player involved at all times. The ghosts in Pac-Man were famously designed to each have unique personalities that dictated their movement, relative to Pac-Man. There is a hunter ghost, a stupid ghost, a ghost who tries to trap players. The patterns of ghost behavior are never static, they are always evolving around their unique personalities and the choices the player makes. Every time a player comes to an intersection in Pac-Man they must think about the choice they make because it will have a dynamic consequence in the game.

Enter the Yomi.

Morin spoke about applying this principle into first person shooters like Far Cry 2, creating a clearly defined space, offering players a limited number of options, and programming the AI to behave dynamically based on player choices. Morin spoke about an injured player running into a small house for cover. Here the enemies can either throw grenades into the house to flush the player out or the player can run through the house and trick the enemies by flanking them. The enemies might also be aware of the player's tendency to flank and spring a trap for the player at the other door. If there is a dynamic consequence at each step of the way and the enemies respond differently every time the player tries to change his strategy something meaningful will always be happening.

Morin brought up Call of Duty 4 as an example of a game that had poorly defined space and little dynamic action in it. He mentioned the game's opening level on a shipping barge as an example where player action is almost irrelevant as the level almost plays itself. Players feel superfluous to the action because their squad mates kill almost every enemy in the level for them. In contrast he praised Bioshock as an example of a game which provided a well-defined environment in which enemy patterns changed dynamically based on player behavior. The only problem was the game's progression ruined the sense of tension by empowering players so much that all the dynamic changes were meaningless because players could overwhelm enemies without thought by the end.

Morin talked about the ideal for first person gameplay in terms of multiplayer experience. "Every time I see someone playing a multiplayer game, they are very tense, on the edge of their seat," said Morin. This is the result of a battle of the minds going on between competing players. This is defined in Japanese by the term "yomi," the idea of knowing your opponent's mind. The concept of yomi is rarely employed in single player FPSs, noted Morin, but it can be with a little attention to AI programming and carefully defining the space in which the players can pursue each other. Morin likened the cat and mouse game between AI and players to Richard Feynman's description of physics, which he described as watching God play chess and trying to discern the rules by observing only the action. In this way, games can become a kind of great debate, either between competing players, or between the player and the game itself. Getting to that point in a single player first person shooter is Morin's ultimate goal and what he hopes to accomplish with Far Cry 2.